That Pesky “Living Wage”

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The minimum wage in the United States is $7.25/hour. The minimum wage in the state of Arizona is $10.50/hour.  It is one of the highest in the nation.  It is a disaster. People deserve a decent living wage.  In 2017 58.3% of all workers were paid an hourly wage.  Only 542,000 of those workers were paid the federal minimum wage. The profile for those workers was basically under the age of twenty-five, no high school diploma, and so forth and so on.  These are the people to whom liberals enjoy pandering. In order to attempt to get their votes (and this bunch doesn’t vote) they are demanding a higher wage.  Perhaps they should, instead, demand they clean up their act and finish high school.

People deserve a decent wage.  Those paying that wage also deserve a decent hour’s work from that wage. Having spent the past ten months dealing with a higher minimum wage, I think it is a total scam.  The problem with a higher minimum wage is it encourages mediocrity and inflation.

A higher minimum wage is an insult to someone who was once making above the minimum wage.  Take the ten dollar an hour person who was quite pleased with what they were making. When the minimum wage was eight dollars, ten bucks was good.  Suddenly, a viable employee is making the same thing as a useless burger flipper. The valuable employee needs to be making at least fourteen dollars an hour to compensate.

Someone is going to be out of a job, and it will be the useless burger flipper.

The problem is the useless burger flipper factor.  Empowered, the useless burger flipper mentality now thinks he is worth fifteen bucks an hour instead of minimum wage.  While a disparate employer might be able to justify ten dollars an hour when the minimum wage was eight, fifteen dollars an hour is out of the question.  But, hopped up (a very good description of some of these people) on their success, they aren’t happy with fifteen dollars an hour.  In order not to be insulted, the guy making fifteen dollars an hour now requires twenty.  I may pay for an hour, but forget two and three will be impossible.

There is also an arrogance factor. The same burger flipper is now too good to pull weeds, rake leaves, or cut grass. Forget cleaning a house. As for flipping those burgers, well, companies are going robotic.   Floppy the burger flipper costs a minimum of $60K.  It can make up to 300 burgers an hour.

Think about it.  If a burger joint is open sixteen hours, that’s 2 employees doing 8 hour shifts at a total of $160 a day.  The restaurant is open 7 days a week.  That’s $1120/week.  There are 52 weeks in a year, or $58,240 a year. That doesn’t even count the money an employer must pay for taxes.  In other words, it will be cheaper for an employer to rent a robot than hire two people.  Two people would be out of a job.

Thank about it.

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